hi i am new here and i have a hp laptop amd64 nvidia graphics i have vista64 ultimate installed on NTFS local disk(c: free space 60gig). i would like to kno what i would have to do to install mandriva and keep my existing os. is this possible? i also have a "recovery" partition(d: with approx 7.5gig free) which i wouldn't mind formatting if necessary. thanks ahead of time for any help as i am a newbie i look forward to making some friends along the way.

had basically the same setup here...shrunk the ntfs partition...then took that space up with a lvm setup. That way you're not messing up any of your windows partitions, just making them smaller, and then you're set. There's plenty of documentation available for this kind of setup

thanks mr what is the best way to "shrink" my partition ive only ever partitioned b4 with a format disk which obviously is not what i need... also what is an LVM setup?

in your case you can take a back up of whatever you have in C drive into your recovery drive, then format the C drive (the Vista drive) then repartition it into two different drives and then recover your Vista from the recovery drive. So you would have a C drive for Vista, a D drive as a recovery drive and another drive for Mandriva...Moreover all the data that you have in your C drive presently will be recovered and nothing will be lost...but you still get a drive for Mandriva.

This is one solution and you can try it out...

Cheers!!!!

A gparted live cd allows you to resize your partitions. Backup before hand. I resized my XP partition this way. I did have problems with XP afterwards and had to use the XP install disk to fix XP so that it would boot.
Andy

Hi,

Since you are using 'Vista' I would suggest that you use the disk management tools for 'Vista' to shrink/resize your partition(s). I would use the disk defragment first then resize. By using the 'M$ Vista' disk tools you will have less of a chance for problems with the partitions.

Of course you should perform a backup of your hdd before any action to the hdd.

This might help.

Here is a little howto using Ubuntu as the linux distro.

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vi...lled_first.htm

The advice about using Vista tools on Vista should be followed to help ensure that Vista will boot after the linux installation. It is none the less a good idea to burn a restore copy of Vista before you begin. Vista help and Google will tell you more.

Good Luck